#Heroes

I take Mondays off and usually do things that I enjoy doing. So, yesterday as I was sitting in my chair letting my thoughts wander, going down rabbit trails, this word came into my mind. Heroes! I was intrigued, wondering where it came from as I wasn't thinking about heroic things or anything like that. I decided to follow that thought and started having this conversation with myself, asking myself the question: "Cecil, who are your heroes?"

That made me think. Who are my heroes? I have a few heroes and they fall into different categories. They are not just heroes who are heroic people, just doing great things all the time. For me, only Jesus was that kind of a hero – perfect in every way. But, the heroes that I had here, were heroic in a particular career. For example, Billy Graham and Sam Kamalesan, heroes for me, ones who walk the talk, who live their lives keeping their faith intact, not compromising in any way, making sure that their personal lives were not detrimental to their preaching or the discourses that they had with people.

More Than Just Coffee

I'm not sure how many of you frequent Starbucks here in India, but Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks, is an inspiration. To read about some of the things that he has done, to look at some of the decisions that he has taken, are just so good in terms of the boldness, the enterprise, the innovation of the man, right from the time that he got into coffee, captured by this whole notion of finding a community place between home and office that people could come to and just sit and enjoy coffee and conversation with each other. Out of that birthed the Starbucks coffee houses. But also before that, going to Italy, going into coffee places there and seeing the way coffee was dealt with in Italy and trying to do the same thing in the US. This all spoke for his heart in creating a wonderful community that would be based around sipping coffee.

Yet, as we look at his life, if seems that as he got into Starbucks first as Director for Operations, left and came back again as CEO and then actually bought the company through local investors and was its Chairman for many years. When he gave up as CEO, he stayed on as Chairman. But right around 2007-2008, as Starbucks began to increase beyond any plan that they previously had – they were starting 7 new stores a day – they were mushrooming all over the place. Howard Schultz realized that they had lost their initial capacity to engage both the partners, or the baristas as the employees are called at Starbucks, but also the community, the consumers who were coming. He said that it almost seemed that there was a sense of loss in terms of what Starbucks had initially started out to do.

I Owe It To You

I am actually in the southern part of India this morning, at an Institute of learning, here for a graduation service and excited that this evening is the graduation for the students who have spent 3 years honing their craft and getting ready to go out into the world and see how equipped they are to face and embrace the things that God has called them into this world to do. But, as you can imagine, every time you revisit a place, you end up reminiscing. I came in last evening and I have been reminiscing – walking around chapels, halls – thinking about my own days at graduate school. I remembered professors and how we picked the classes that we wanted to attend. We would enquire of seniors who had taken those particular subjects before, and ask them how they found a particular professor. If they wanted to be kind, they would hedge a little bit with their answer; if they wanted to be blunt, they would tell us to avoid the class if possible. But, invariably, some of them would say, "That professor is really a good person!" Inherent in that statement was a clear indication was that you needed to avoid this class because what they were saying was that this person was a good person but not a great teacher.

I remember when my son was in the 12^th grade in a boarding school. This school got a couple of professors who came in just to teach for 3 years. They, a husband and wife, had been very successful in the corporate world, working with a multi-national company, but had decided to leave and invest in students for 3 years. They taught economics and my son took that class. Till that point, he had absolutely no interest in economics. But being taught by these 2 changed him. He was so challenged that he went on to have a deep love for it, took it as his major in undergrad school, did very well, topped his class, wrote a paper that was published in a college magazine – all because for 1 year, he had the opportunity of being taught by really gifted people who had decided to invest in students.

MEANS TO AN END

by Dr. Cecil Clements (7th August 2012)

I came across on the Internet, a kind of a compendium that 99 OP Jindal Engineering and Management scholars had put together in 2007. They had asked their scholars (these are people who have got the engineering scholarship) “Visualize yourself on your 50th birthday. What would you want your critical stakeholders (they could be your colleagues, your spouse, your children or any person who you consider critical) to say about you?

LET’S TALK!

by Dr. Cecil Clements (12th June 2012)

Much has been written about Steve Jobs, the way he handled Apple and his unique leadership style. I came across this article by Walter Isaacson, a writer with great credibility, having written biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, entitled ‘The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs’, it perked my interest and is an excellent read—one worth reading in its entirety.  However, let me read you just a snippet.

PREPARE YE THE WAY

by Dr. Cecil Clements (21st February 2012)
I’ve been enjoying Jim Collins’ new book titled ‘Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos & Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All’ which he co-authors with Morten Hansen. This is a great book coming out of 9 years of research. He’s looking at companies that are 10X changes or successes. Right off the bat he looks at some of the myths that we have about successful companies and he says that the research that they have, undermines these particular myths. I’ll give them to you very quickly.

THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN COMPANY

by Dr. Cecil Clements (24th January 2012)

This morning, instead of Harvard Business Review, I decided to look at London Business School’s magazine, ‘Business Strategy Review – Insights for Global Business’. An article which caught my attention was entitled ‘Work With Meaning’. Some of the things mentioned intrigued me. It basically said that there must meaning and purpose in the work that we do. Not only does that give us a better perspective or create a better environment for people to work in where there is purpose, but it also helps in the long run when there is economic instability. In the course of writing the article, they had spotted a number of winning organizations who had been able to weather the financial crisis that had hit them by transforming their business models, redirecting their strategies or simply build momentum by recommitting to their long-held guiding principles and sense of purpose – going back to their reason for existence.

SEIZE YOUR MOMENT

One of my life’s passions is music. I love music; I love listening to music and also love being part of a performance, putting together a sequence of musical events that will be a blessing. I remember many years ago, watching the orchestra get ready. I always enjoy the symphony orchestra. I love to hear the sound of the instruments building up, the cadences, the crescendos and all of that. But even more, I love being a part of the build-up behind the scenes.

I remember being in the choral part, and watching the orchestra and as it began to play with the theme and different variations on the theme, it slowly began to build up the crescendo and the momentum of the whole piece. I watched different instruments as the conductor brought in the violins and the violas and the cellos and the double bass; then the wind instruments came in – the bassoons and the clarinets. Then you could see the people on the percussion; the tympani especially. You could see him moving back and forth to the rhythm, gyrating, playing one beat at a time. Then as the crescendo began to get more overpowering, more and more beats came in.

Humble Beginnings; Great Ends!

Thinking about the month about to go by on this penultimate day of August, I thought, 2 men who have changed and shaped the history of different parts of the world, retired this month. I looked at their lives and was so encouraged reading their biographical profiles of how they had come up and did the things that they did. I thought that I must share this with you and share some of the excitement that I feel as I look at people who have lived lives that have touched many people beyond themselves.

Beyond Rainy Days & Mondays

I came into the office this morning, it was raining and overcast; I was reminded of a song sung many years ago by the Carpenters. I think it was written by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams and the words go like this:

Talking to myself and feeling old,
Sometimes I’d like to quit, nothing ever seems to fit.
Hanging around; nothing to do but frown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

What I’ve got they used to call the blues,
Nothing is really wrong, feeling like I don’t belong.
Walking around, some kind of lonely clown.
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

Acknowledge the Influence

I have been reflecting on the path that I have taken to the point where I am now, and as I reminisced on my academic days, I was reminded about how we chose some of our classes. We would talk to seniors about which subjects to choose and which professors. The general questions would be, “how did you find this professor? Was it an interesting class or not?” Some students would be quite open in their statements about the kind of professor they had, but others would very gently say, “He/she is a good man/woman” and in that statement would be a clear indication that while this person was a good individual, he/she was not a great professor and it was not a good class to be in. so without really demeaning the person, they would let you know that you didn’t want to be in that class as you wouldn’t learn too much.